Chapter 102: On the Spot Reaction
The Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom was suffocating beneath the scent of forget me not perfume.
Tamara sat by the window in the last row, staring expressionlessly at the man on the podium in dazzling violet robes.
Gilderoy Lockhart.
This buffoon, who had stolen the position she had once coveted and now strutted across the podium like a peacock in heat, was handing out his carefully prepared first quiz to the second year students.
Tamara picked up the parchment with two fingers, her face twisting in disgust.
What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour?
What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition?
...
In what year did Gilderoy Lockhart win Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award?
Looking at the questions, Tamara felt an unprecedented sense of sacrilege.
If sixteen year old Tom Riddle had been sitting here, Lockhart's corpse would have been found in the bathroom before nightfall.
Tamara did not even pick up her quill. She simply pushed the scrap of waste parchment aside.
Then she tilted her head slightly and looked toward the Gryffindor seats across the aisle.
Hermione Granger was staring intently at the quiz.
Tamara remembered that, back at Flourish and Blotts, this Mudblood had once treated Lockhart's books like sacred scripture.
But after Tamara exposed him as a fraud, Hermione's admiration for Lockhart had clearly suffered an irreparable crack.
Sure enough, Hermione took a deep breath. Her hand, which was usually raised high to answer questions, now gripped her quill and drew a huge X across the quiz, almost covering the entire parchment.
Then she crossed her arms and glared coldly at Lockhart, who was still preening on the podium.
"Finally grew a brain."
In her mind, Tamara gave this Gryffindor a barely passing mark for the first time ever.
At the very least, compared with Brown and Patil, who were still giggling at Lockhart nearby, Hermione was not completely beyond saving.
Half an hour later, Lockhart rummaged through a stack of nearly blank papers, clearly embarrassed by the students' lack of cooperation.
To save face, he coughed twice and pulled a large cage covered in black cloth out from beneath the podium.
"Since the quiz was a little difficult, let us move on to some exciting practical work!"
Lockhart flashed his signature smile and whipped away the black cloth.
"Cornish pixies!"
The cage was filled with tiny electric blue creatures about eight inches tall.
They had pointed faces and voices so shrill they sounded like a flock of parrots arguing at once.
"Now, let us see how you deal with them!"
Lockhart threw open the cage door.
It was as if he had opened the gates of hell.
The pixies shot out like rockets, instantly plunging the classroom into disaster.
They smashed ink bottles, tore books to pieces and flung them at the ceiling, grabbed Neville by the ears and hoisted him into the air, while two others tried to twist off a Slytherin boy's nose.
The whole class screamed and dived under their desks.
"Catch them! Quickly!" Lockhart panicked as well, drawing his wand and shouting, "Peskipiksi Pesternomi!"
It was clearly an ineffective spell he had invented himself.
Not only did it do nothing, but one pixie took the chance to swoop down, snatch Lockhart's wand, and toss it out the window.
"Oh! My goodness!"
Lockhart cried out in terror.
Realising that the situation was completely out of control, the great Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor made a decision perfectly suited to his character.
He scrambled toward the office door behind the podium, already trying to slip inside and lock it behind him.
"I shall leave the rest to you! Round them up and get them back in the cage!"
By the time he finished speaking, half his body had already vanished through the doorway.
"Despicable coward."
Tamara stood at the back of the classroom.
An invisible pressure seemed to surround her. The pixies instinctively sensed that the black haired girl was not to be trifled with, and not one dared come within three feet of her.
She surveyed the chaotic classroom, her gaze landing on Hermione.
Hermione did not hide.
Gritting her teeth in anger, she pulled out her wand and waved it at two pixies about to tear apart her textbook.
"Immobulus!"
A flash of blue light followed, and the two pixies froze in midair.
Tamara watched coldly, with no intention of helping.
Since this Gryffindor could handle it, there was no need for her to waste her time.
She picked up her bag and prepared to leave through the back door.
But the moment her hand touched the doorknob, that haunting system voice exploded in her mind.
[Ding! Sudden Mission Triggered: A Helping Hand of Friendship!]
[As an outstanding Hogwarts student full of virtuous character, how can you bear to watch classmate Hermione Granger fight alone while surrounded by pixies?]
[Please show the whole class the meaning of true camaraderie and magical mastery. Help her end this farce!]
[Reward: Courage +2]
[Dumbledore's Suspicion Level decreased by 3%]
[Penalty: For one week, your wand will release pink bubbles shaped like hearts every time you cast a spell.]
Tamara's fingers tightened around the doorknob until her knuckles turned white.
Camaraderie?
With a Mudblood?
"Think of it as a smokescreen for Dumbledore."
She weighed the matter coldly through gritted teeth.
"The more benevolent and impartial I appear, the more that old madman's suspicion will fall."
"This is merely a disgusting political investment."
She took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed the urge to blow up the system along with the entire classroom.
Tamara turned around.
A chilling focus emerged in her dark eyes.
There was no need to shout and flail like Lockhart.
Her holly wand slid silently from her sleeve.
"Petrificus Totalus."
She spoke the incantation in an extremely cold and steady tone.
What surged from the tip of her wand was not the thin beam Hermione had produced. It was a cold, silver white ring of light that rippled outward like water.
The ring swept across most of the classroom in an instant.
The pixies, which had been darting wildly about while shrieking and biting, froze in midair as if the whole room had been paused.
The classroom fell silent at once.
Only the sound of frozen pixies dropping onto desks and the floor remained, one after another, like dumplings falling into a pot.
Hermione turned her head in surprise.
She watched Tamara approach slowly. The distance born from having her common sense crushed vanished from her eyes, replaced by an extremely complicated sense of wonder.
As Tamara passed Hermione, she tilted her head slightly and offered a haughty critique.
"Your casting speed barely passes, but your magic output is unstable, Granger."
"I..."
Hermione opened her mouth, seemingly still reeling from what had just happened. Then her eyes began to sparkle, and she hurried to Tamara's side.
"Thank you! I really didn't expect you to stay. You're such a good person, Tamara."
Tamara had heard the words good person far too many times.
Yet no matter how often she heard them, the phrase was still as grating as ever.
She did not mind being perceived as a good person. Hypocritical kindness was, after all, an excellent lubricant for gaining power and smoothing her path through Hogwarts.
But using a disguise as a weapon was one thing.
Being forced to practise such cheap compassion was another.
Looking at Hermione's eyes, shining with pure gratitude, Tamara felt every drop of blood in her body protesting.
This feeling of being forced to radiate some ridiculous glow of humanity filled her with instinctive disgust from the depths of her soul.
Tamara's eye twitched violently.
Before she could lash out, however, Hermione's fanatical thirst for knowledge immediately surfaced.
"But how did you do it? You turned Petrificus Totalus into a spell that affected a whole area. Was it the wand movement, or did you adjust the magical resonance during the incantation? There is no record of this in The Standard Book of Spells!"
Tamara looked at the Mudblood before her, who thirsted for knowledge and had even dared to label her a good person, and felt a wave of suffocated frustration rise in her chest.
Just then, Draco, who had crawled out from beneath a desk in a dishevelled state, saw the scene and found it extremely irritating.
Why should a Gryffindor Mudblood receive Tamara's praise?
Unwilling to be outdone, he drew his wand and shouted at the few remaining pixies still twitching on the floor.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Then, with practised ease, he flicked his wand and tossed the stiff pixies out through the open window like rubbish.
Once he finished, Draco lifted his chin, dusted off his robes, and looked at Tamara with a smug expression.
"See? It isn't that hard."
He deliberately drawled the words, casting Hermione an utterly disdainful glance.
"Tamara, there is really no need for you to lower yourself by discussing magical theory with a Gryffindor. Some people can memorise The Standard Book of Spells from cover to cover and still never understand what true talent is."
Tamara looked at the Gryffindor who had forced the label of good person onto her, then at the Slytherin who was seeking praise like a peacock spreading its feathers.
Her grip tightened around her wand in unbearable irritation.
Just as she was searching for an outlet for her pent up rage, there came a soft click.
The office door behind the podium opened a crack.
Lockhart peered through it and saw that the classroom outside was now completely quiet and safe.
He immediately pushed the door open, straightened his slightly dishevelled robes, and put on a relieved yet utterly shameless smile, ready to emerge and claim the credit.
"Ah, well done, children! It seems you have fully grasped my teaching objective: on the spot reaction to a sudden crisis!"
Tamara: "..."
.....
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